


If I Ran The Zoo

by pseudoactual_mahou



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: I'd like to formally apologize for writing this.
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-14
Updated: 2015-08-03
Packaged: 2018-04-09 08:23:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4341263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pseudoactual_mahou/pseuds/pseudoactual_mahou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peridot has a lot of disdain in her, but she reserves true hatred for the humble institution of the zoo. Also, its administrators. Especially the guy who names the snakes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The First Miserable Evening (this place smells like animal feces and depression)

**Author's Note:**

> "#first person to write AU fic of ecoterrorist peridot and zookeeper ronaldo gets puNCHED IN THE THROAT"
> 
> I used to respect myself. I used to think that I was going to do something impressive with my life. Now, this is what I do. Fulfilling throat-punch conditions for the fragments of sensation I can experience. I am so sorry.

Basically, the world is a system: sun goes up, then down, providing energy. According to extant natural rules, some animals die, while others survive, pass on their genes and die, slowly optimizing for ideal survivors. There is intention and there is sensibility; if one paradigm thrives it is because it thrives correctly, according to the rules, which exist for a reason. All rules exist for a reason, she feels; some reasons supersede others, but there is always a reason and there is always a rule. If you don’t know the reason — don’t defy the rule. Chesterton’s Fence.

(She’s pretty sure that that’s what that means.)

And then there are humans. In her darkest moments, Peridot suspects that the whole of human civilization has been a ruse, an elaborate stage play called Look How Competent We Are At Not Killing Ourselves And Everything. (A stage play, mind you — defined as ‘false, with acceptable F/X’.) Nature exists, the Great Optimizer whose end-result is perfectly adapted to its environment, and yet somehow these — these clods, these imbeciles, these unfit tamperers have seen fit to make themselves the unconquered heads of the chain without becoming optimal, which might be alright if their specific path to control hadn’t involved, for example, nuclear weapons. Global warming. Food wastage (Peridot’s terrible ramen/terrace-grown tomato diet is nevertheless exacting and calculated to ensure that she always gets the exact daily recommended dose of everything available) and drought (water, an unalloyed good and nearly-free resource, used on chocolate bars — she could just spit) and zoos.

Zoos. Peridot is disdainful towards many things (Las Vegas, for preying on the public's lack of statistical knowledge, the corporation that makes Doritos, anyone who buys any kind of “expansion pack"), but she has what a less delicate person might describe as a hate-on for zoos. (Jasper, incidentally, is that less delicate person.) Zoos — massive enclosures costing money, costing time, near-endless grotesqueries of cost — and for what? “Look at the animals.” There is no worse use of time that Peridot can imagine. Zoo breeding programs, were they not absolute jokes with terrible success rates, strike her as fundamentally incentivizing poor behavior — after all, the zoo must always have access to animals to maintain profits, and the offspring of an endangered animal may end up in the breeding pits themselves, which strikes her as counterproductive (or would if the product were not clear as day).

There is a zoo outside her apartment. It has recently opened a Lizard Hall — and as someone with a deep affinity for reptiles (cold-blooded to conserve precious nighttime energy, often greenish, with similarly beady eyes) Peridot finds this intolerable.

Which is why --

Oh, how terrible convictions are, to make her put something above the rules!

— she is breaking into the Lizard Exhibit to free the lizards and set the zoo on fire, and she is opening the electronic lock with Actual Hacking (when people say “ecoterrorist” they often imagine some kind of longhaired peacenik Luddite; Peridot in her darkest green hoodie for stealth and concealment, back declaring that “When I Evolve I’m Going To Kill You All,” prosthetic fingers tapping away at a laptop that seems to have been forged from glass, defies the stereotype, as she so often does) instead of standard Password Inspector tricks, and when she has finished her mineral-water-swilling roommate’s jaw will drop hard enough to crack the floor and she will have to start wearing economical, hard-wear outfits instead of sundresses, per the terms of their bet.

Peridot gulps. The first gate is bypassed — but the matter of the inner door remains. In this half-light, she isn’t counting on her own skills in stealth — what skills? — and thus can pick the lock in front of her without issue, in theory — after all, she’s got a pick in the hole already. The issue, then, is that there’s footsteps in the backdrop, from inside the exhibit, getting closer, and a faint voice somewhat similar to her assistant English teacher from high school (the one who’d accused her cousin of replacing twenty boxes of chai tea with jello (she had, but his accusation was ridiculous enough to discredit him in one breath)). It’s the same vague impression that, while the speaker’s syntax isn’t currently elevated, it wouldn’t have to strain to become such.

“Ah, Kimbery. Are you hungry? Perhaps you’ve been deprived of your mouse-meals by our shadowy masters here at the zoo?” A chuckle. (Did he name the snakes? She’s seen the nameplates on her unpaid day excursion / zoo break-in. Did he give the snakes different names than the ones they already had?) “And you, Malfeas, you proud beast. I see a lot of myself in you, King of Dark Cities.” (Titles?) Peridot adjusts herself, leaning around the corner to get a glimpse through the iron lattice on the Reptilian exhibit. There’s a figure in zoo regalia, hair sort of like an order of curly fries, blond and turned away from her. In short: this situation is compromised. Peridot palms her glass-tablet phone and begins working out a way to cover her tracks in the electronic lock, slipping the lock-pick out with only the faintest of jingles. (Expert multitasker means expert multitasker.)

She turns on one heel, flicking the pick down her sleeve (well, with no finesse, but the idea is solid) and is at the gate in a short moment —

“State your purpose."

Even as she blinks in the flashlight’s glare, trying to turn (rookie mistake, says the Jasper in her head), she is already cognizant of the fact that yes, she is carrying matches and oil, and that someone who says “State your purpose” while working as a zoo guard during off hours is not likely to take his job less than cartoonishly seriously.

Damn it, Lapis.


	2. Plausibility is the Bugbear of Lesser Minds (or possibly the hobgoblin; hold on, let me check the monster manual)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maybe if I conceive of this as a form of penance, I can get through it.

There’s an intruder assaulting the zoo. 

There’s an  _intruder_ — wild-eyed, wearing a dark green Covert Action Hoodie, seizing up in fright and sudden blindness exactly as was intended — assaulting the  _zoo_. On  _his_  overtime night. He’s caught a  _zoo terrorist_. 

Or a zoo  _conspirator_. 

Ronaldo repeats this in his head —  _zoo agent, animal infiltrator, menagerie subversion expert_ — with the fervor, the sheer clapping-and-tiptoe-jumping  _delight_  of someone who has always suspected on some level that the zoo would be raided covertly at 2:12 AM on an off day and whose propositions re: improved security measures on the Reptiles of the World Exhibit have gone sadly unacknowledged by senior management (i.e. Dad, Peedee). Admittedly, he suggested such to monitor the snakes — he loves Malfeas and Adorjan and the Ebon Dragon et al., bless their icy veins, but  _love_  and  _trust_  are not the same thing — but action by external reptilian agents has always been a concern. 

And now — a real intruder. In his hand, Ronaldo carefully hefts the flashlight for combat, and repeats himself to the dark figure: “ _State your purpose_.” It’s a good general-use line. 

The invader raises an arm to shade her eyes, and Ronaldo’s light makes it glint with a strange dark sheen, like chitin(?!?!). “…I’m a… new employee here,” she says, in a voice that buzzes, just a little. "I was given permission to survey the layout for a night. You can check with our shared superiors tomorrow."

Hah! A  _likely_  story. “A  _likely_  story,” he says, suppressing a smirk, “and one that’s impossible to verify… unless I call Sadie and ask her about you.” The grimace he gets feels exactly like a reward; in a deft movement (thanks to a long and ultimately somewhat misguided stint as a street magician) Ronaldo has his ePhone in his off hand (well, between his fingers), fumbling with sinister dexterity for Sadie’s autodial. 

“I don’t think  _Sadie_  would be pleased to know that I was made to forsake my rigorous sleep schedule for you, Mr…” 

“Fryman. Ronaldo Fryman.”1 Aha — 616. Sadie’s ringtone,  _O, The Sin Returns_  (classic horror!) begins playing. 

“…Ronaldo Fry Man.” There’s something venomous(!!!!) in that voice, a weird little worm of spite that is currently flicking around the edge of Ronaldo’s subconscious — like an acid-washed gong being struck. There’s something acid about her in general, he decides. “It’s an ungodly hour. Do you honestly want to disturb Sadie — or me, for that matter? More than you’ve already done?” 

(her mode of address is so Little Green Man he wants to  _scream —_  this is the exact kind of person he pictures when he hears the word “reptilian”) 

Even so, the intruder sort of has a point. Ronaldo hits the “OFF” button midway through the fourth or fifth ring (well, midway through something that might  _not_  be the beginning of the muzzy sentence “Ronaldo it’s two in the morning I can’t come over to watch  _The Creature Within 2: The Creature Without_ ”) and slips his phone back into his pocket, maintaining a stance with his flashlight vaguely echoing that of a fencer. Will it be efficacious in combat? Maybe he should be adopting a truncheon-based fighting stance. “Well, ex _cuse_  me if I don’t —“ and that is where everything goes wrong, because one be-carapaced hand has snuck out of sight and flickered back in a weird arc. Something appears, from this angle, to be growing or blooming in his direction, some kind of dully-colored dot — 

At this juncture, it falls to us, your humble narrators, to disclose a few relevant facts about energy drinks. 

There exists a heavily niche brand of energy drink, sold only in local Delmarva stores, known as “MLG” — Mighty Liquid (for the purpose of) Gaming. Many flavors exist — Mulberry, Mandarin Orange, Mixed Fruit, Meat, Mountain Dew® — but the main appeal to its market is its willingness to identify itself as an ingroup drink, one specifically catering to those who want energy for the specific purpose of noscoping people at 3 AM.   

The average top-tier energy drink weighs somewhere in the ballpark of sixteen ounces plus the weight of its ergonomically-designed, recyclable, economical aluminum can, 60% lighter than average (although no one specifies average). However, MLG is designed to make a satisfying  _thunk_ noise when thrown against a surface should its drinker lose a match (alternatively, a solid  _crash_  if one’s ire is directed against a screen, or a somewhat unnerving  _whunch_  if used to indicate one’s displeasure to the victors in more direct terms), and, as such, its cans are actually 60%  _heavier_  than standard. Even when empty, they pack a punch.

Ronaldo has drunk MLG before, and is familiar with the sound it makes. Thus, when there is a sound very much resembling the onomatopoeia  _whunch_ , he’s able to identify what has happened within seconds of the incident — although, unfortunately, there is very little he can do besides allow himself to tilt backwards  and almost,  _almost_  maintain his posture. 

Almost. 

On his back, he is briefly at peace with himself before realizing that he can hear feet moving in a weirdly stutter-like pattern, at which point his arm muscles, empowered by boffer LARPs, raise him back to his feet in short order and he is off like a bullet after the vanishing greenish interloper, scoring little glints and unnerving light angles from her hair and her frantically pumping arms. 

“Stop! Stop in the name of the law!” But zoo law remains ignored: the retreating figure hangs a left around the Wonderful World of Simians, knocking down the admissions stile and spraying two-dollar bills and seventy-five-cent pieces everywhere, possibly as a diversionary tactic. Ronaldo vaults the currency debris in a single leap and hangs the same left, pushing himself at maximum velocity for a dizzying instant of instability before he’s back and suddenly unbearably close to the figure in the hoodie, who is half-turned (first rule of chases: don’t look back) and thus susceptible to his flashlight in her eyes. In a swift step, Ronaldo’s grasp is on her arm — her shell-like, uncannily light (!!!!) arm, with fingers that seem differentiated by artifice rather than nature (!!!!!!!!) and a face obscured by a green visor. This close, he can make out a look of contempt mingling with panic. 

(And pleasant cheekbones. And, uh… teeth that aren’t quite  _pointy_ , but they would definitely make that ‘ting’ sound effect if this were an anime.) 

“Alright!” Ronaldo tightens his grip with one hand, shifting his weight to keep her in place, and stretches for his phone. “I’m going to make some calls — and then you and I can discuss in  _full_  what you’re doing here.” 

“Unhand me, you… you clod!” she hisses. To Ronaldo’s ears, the buzz sounds higher, faintly nasal, and outraged beyond almost anything he’s ever heard — the vibrating tones of a Fury. There’s some cracking noises, too — knuckles? Fingers (not of earthly ken) fumbling for a concealed weapon? 

“ _Clod_? You  _know_  my name, ma’am, and I’ll thank you to use it.” It’s a weirdly antiquated insult, too. “Although I don’t, come to think of it, know yours."  

“You don’t need to.” 

(At this point, the teeth might go  _mischievous glint sound effect_.) 

“You’re never going to see me again." 

The intruder twists back, and, with an extraordinarily painful-sounding wrench,  _pops out her arm_. 

By the time Ronaldo tears himself away from the glossy off-black-and-green surface of what cannot be anything but space-age armor, all he can hear is a distant acid-gong cackling in the direction of the gates, a locust chorus emanating from the mouth of the single most compelling mystery he has ever genuinely encountered in three years of early morning snake enclosure patrols. 

He’s selected “NEW BLOG POST" before he’s even entirely cognizant of having grabbed his phone.

 _1 Dear lord_, thinks Peridot. His name is, apparently,  _a_ _ctually_  Fry Man; either he was born with that hair, or his parents used a numerologist to determine his future style — some distant forebear of Peridot’s cousin’s maybe-girlfriend, who (on the one occasion that they talked) punched her out and then guessed her exact weight and age down to the kilogram and day.


	3. A Modern-Day Cinderella (in my defense, prosthetic arms and glass shoes will be basically interchangeable in the cyberpunk future)

A success high is a terrible thing, made all the worse by the fact that Peridot has failed by any definition of the word — but thanks to her essential nature as a slightly small-picture conqueror, a bishop with aspirations to rookhood (what a mid-level bureaucrat she would have made in the age of the Khanate! What an assistant quartermaster to Alexander the Great!) she is seething with laughter that traces sonic outlines of her weird, sort of gaunt face and mouth on distant buildings as she jogs towards home. She can already see her roomie in a pleasant, hard-wearing and economical solid-color jumpsuit combo, in just-south-of-tasteful midnight blue — because Peridot, for the first time in years, has genuinely fulfilled the terms of a dare!

Sure, she’s down an ultra-light Tron-style arm and her twilight hours, but her person (vital) and her computers (essential) are secured, and she has these prosthetics manufactured for the cost of materials and the weird polyurethane blend she borrows from Lapis's Fluid Dynamics assignments, so it’ll take a few hours — tops — to produce a replacement, and in the meantime she is a free agent, a key lime blip on the radar, mercifully unidentified and entirely freed of the terror of Fry Man. All first-order threats have been secured; no zookeeper, no Sadie, apparent supervisor to Fryman, and no threat of the owners. The only remaining authority figure that can possibly threaten her in any real sense is...

…the… police.

(Her steps slow; with a brief twist, Peridot hangs a right just on the curb, into a small culvert-alley, and considers her options.)

Would the zookeeper, someone who reacted to an attempt at violent sabotage by shouting “Who goes there?” and attempting a high-stakes chase, try to report her for criminal activity?

Can she entirely… discount that possibility? Because, in a purely hypothetical sense, a one-armed technomancer-type dressed all in shades of mint and acid with a luminescent, semitransparent tablet — someone who is wanted in at least one state, an unknown ecoterrorist with weird proclivities and very few financial resources — if that person should have her description released to the general public by even a weird-haired conspiracy theorist, then in that purely hypothetical universe, Alternate Peridot would be _quantum boned_.

Which is to say, current universe Peridot may — as she speaks — as she monologues? — be (non-quantum) boned.

Plasticine footsteps quicken — utilizing limited, but surprisingly effective self-taught parkour skills to route across trash cans and fences — with tempo kept by Peridot’s endless litany of anxiety-driven misanthropy, because she is off to see a girl about a bet, and a different one about a basement in which she can hide from cops.

—

Adversarial Odd Couple relationships don’t, in general, happen. The various contrivances by which slobs and neat freaks are slotted into opposite halves of weirdly nice if somewhat clashing apartments are, in fact, contrivances; in general, situations wherein two wackily opposed personalities are forced together are averted by those exact personalities, who lack the emotional bond that, in a sitcom, might exist as a result of months of off-camera acquaintance.

Despite this principle, Lapis and Peridot are, somehow, actual Roommates Who Hate Each Other — and, at the same time, they have failed on several important levels to be the Odd Couple, since their sensibility sets on several different stereotype levels fail to coincide.

At first glance, the relevant details that others discern about Lapis Lazuli are: she frequently wears sundresses in cobalts and azures, and doesn’t usually have shoes; “Lapis Lazuli” is her real, full name; she sort of looks like an escapee from a music video involving a lot of synthesizer and slo-mo beach pans. Strangers see these facts and sum them and expect some variation on the theme of hippie, and are thus surprised when they _meet_ Lapis Lazuli as she is now, which is to say --

“You’re eating the _Keystone Holiday Sticky_?!"

Lapis looks up, past her stack of slabs of meat and topping, narrow borders set by liverwurst-spread buns1. “Chickened out again, huh?”

“I can’t believe this — we’ve had at least two discussions concerning the Holiday Sticky, haven’t we? That in its effects, it is like buying a standard beefburger, with all that implies for the ozone layer, and then _shooting and cremating a few extra cows_? Not to mention the damage it will deal to our recently cleaned living space, no thanks to you —"

“It’s not like throwing out the burger will revive them, Peri. And don’t change the subject."

“ _I_ didn’t change the — no, wait, wait, this can wait.” Peridot steps in across the threshold and starts rifling through the papers she keeps by the doors with a weird, stilted dexterity (right-handed, too — Lapis is pretty sure that Peridot is a leftie). “I need Jasper’s number, immediately.”

“You’re better friends with her than I am.” With infuriating grace, Lapis begins stripping the breading from her deep-fried banana peel, producing a neat whorl and the fried chocolate bar that the luncheonette uses to replace the banana itself, a carnival food designed by nihilists. “In fact, anyone with any kind of relationship with Jasper is better friends with her than I am. That doorman she put in a headlock, for example."

“Irrelevant! She uses burners, Lapis, _burners_. Affability and access are unrelated here.” Frantic pawing apparently having failed her, Peridot staggers towards her sickly-green bed (it’s like she’s going for a _theme_ sometimes — Lapis can’t quite criticize her in good faith, although luckily acting in good faith has never been one of her hangups) and begins rifling through an old rolodex with, yes, only her nondominant right arm; the left is just the nubbin onto which Lapis has helped stick a number of Tron-styled, 3D-printed, ergonomic and recyclable substitutes before. “I still don’t have her number, Peri, and I seriously don’t understand why you would ask me. Arm’s off, by the way.” Another bite of the fatal burger, of course, signals her real apathy towards all possible explanations (i.e. itchiness, the design is suboptimal and wasteful so I had to recycle it, the design is shoddy and broke when I tried to hop the turnstile so I came home).

“I need an extra _pair_ of arms to search through this perfect storm of irrelevancies for Jasper’s number and I would appreciate it if you — ah- _ha_!” She hoists it like a flag with a note of weird triumph not entirely divorced from a hiss; not for the first time, Lapis thinks that in some other life Peridot could have been an actress whom everyone assumed was a stage tech, instead of a green tech advocate whom everyone assumed was a sysadmin or an IT worker.

It is at this point that Lapis’s curiosity overwhelms her distaste. “Okay, I’m biting. Why do you need to contact Jasper at five in the morning?"

Peridot is at the door when she turns, with an expression that can be described — just barely; she’s beaded with sweat and she has that lack-of-sleep twitch again — as a _grin_. “I won the bet, Lapis,” she says, "and —" Lapis drops her Keystone Holiday Sticky on the carpet and immediately is greeted with a howl of indignation in a minor key — “ _Do you know how hard it will be to remove the grease stains left by that biohazard of a late-night snack_?”

“I don’t care. What did you do tonight?"

“I care about the burger!"

“Just answer the question!"

“…fine, but I am in a hurry. I was intercepted by zoo personnel2 and failed to free the reptiles, but made my escape and thus fulfilled the terms. However, they are still in possession of my arm and may have called the police, so I consider it imperative that I lay low for a time, which is why I am calling in a favor.” Peridot dials as her roommate sinks back into her armchair, fears seemingly assuaged.

“Alright, you didn’t do anything serious and you’re short, so we can probably pass you off as an obnoxious teenage trespasser if anyone shows up. If you left evidence, though, I’m not covering for you. Can’t believe you took me _seriously_ …” Lapis massages her temples as Peridot seems to make contact, then slips in — just after the “Jasper it’s Peridot I require your services” the following: “Incidentally, I’m not wearing those tunics you bought, and we’re still buying my special detergent."

“Are you _seriously_ —“

Jasper’s hammer of a voice rings out through the phone, and Peridot, stuck between an outrage and a horrifyingly strong place, glances around in every direction before finally opting to give Lapis a Significant Look and dash off. 

Three days later, Lapis puts down the Holiday Sticky, her head still swimming from a grease migraine, and answers the door to find a severed arm looking her in the face; attached to that severed arm by a normal arm is a man in a Guy Fieri-style inferno-in-the-guts shirt, an investigative jacket and a trilby, watching her from behind rectangular glasses.

“…can I help you?”

The stranger pauses, shifts stances, waggling what is clearly Peridot’s prosthetic arm in her face — labeled with her address (when Peridot gets back, this is not _continuing_ ), and says “That’s the question _I_ should be asking… around here.”

Yeah, Lapis is _not_ handling this one.

She rotates on a bare heel and shuts the door in a wide, easy motion, ignoring the shouted “Hey wait!”, but — somehow — there’s an incredible _crunch_ ,like a brick of peanut brittle being smashed with a hammer, and the door has lurched in her hands, almost at the end of its arc, a horribly unpleasant sound with worse connotations. _Shit. I killed the brittlest living human_.

“I’ll give you credit for your _attempt_ at dissuading me, but I’m not so easily fooled!” Lapis looks back, dread assuaged, and sees chunks of green plastic-alike and jet-black shell, one forlorn finger sitting inside, and from outside, the gaze of the intruder. "If your machine-woman agent wants her arm back, she’ll come retrieve it personally — unless you’re ready to deal with further damage to precious equipment.”

(Lapis manufactures Peridot’s arms at ten dollars a pop.)

( _Machine-woman_?)

“Peri’s not here, and I’m pretty sure that someone in that shirt cannot possibly be here in any official capacity, so _fuck off,_ unless you want my bare feet buried in your teeth!"

“Come on!” The door handle begins rattling, although a quick shoulder-ram from Lapis fragments the hand sufficiently that it’s no longer jamming the door. “I have a right to know!"

“You have a right to _leave_!” She finally manages to grab the jangling lock-chain and slides it into its appointed socket, without any real triumph. “And as I said previously, you are looking in the wrong apartment — I have no goddamn idea where your ‘machine-woman’ is and I suggest that you ask somewhere else.”

“The truth _will_ out, ma’am!” Slowly, the sound of the intruder fades.

Lapis considers her situation.

_I need better friends,_ she concludes.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1A full recipe for the Keystone Holiday Sticky, courtesy of tumblr user transmemesatan, can be found [here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/15wQuNvv3YlrbcEmaOZ7eJitmbLMS28rMvN-3is8ASWo/edit?usp=sharing).
> 
> 2One of the advantages of the word “personnel” is that it is the same in the singular and plural forms, and thus can be used to produce Dashing Feats and Daring Flights from a story that, in truth, involves outwitting one guy in a khaki vest with a flashlight.


End file.
